• Cleaning up specific user profile properties in SharePoint and avoid indexing them in Search

    After you setup SharePoint application and "My Site" then start to import user profile, you might need to cleanup information that was imported or prevent certain properties from being displayed anywhere in your application. This would happen in a scenario where the customer figures out that the information that was stored in and imported from active directory is not updated and you want to avoid displaying incorrect information across your application.

    To make sure that such user information are not displayed across the site after being imported, you need to notice that this information is regularly updated and cached in multiple places in SharePoint. Basically...

    • Properties might be used for indexing in People Search
    • Properties for specific users might be cached in user information list

    Avoid indexing specific properties

    • Go to user profile service: manage policies
    • Remove the connection from the title and job title fields
    • Make sure the property is optional
    • Make sure that the property is visible only to user manager as shown below
    • Make sure that property is not indexed for search
    • Settings highlighted below in the image

                    


    After you configure the properties…

    • After doing the settings and removing connection to active directory, the properties (title/job title) do not get repopulated to empty and retain the old values. Run the following script to ensure that values are cleaned-up properly.... 

    #URL
    $mySiteUrl = "http://sharepoint:77/"
    $site = Get-SPSite $mySiteUrl
    $context = Get-SPServiceContext $site
    $profileManager = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($context)
    $profiles = $profileManager.GetEnumerator()
    foreach ($userProfile in $profiles) {
    #Get user profile and change the value
              $userProfile["title"].Value = ""
              $userProfile["SPS-JobTitle"].Value = ""
              $userProfile.Commit()
    }

    • After you run the script, check the user profiles from the service and make sure that fields are empty.
    • Perform full import to AD.
    • Check the user profiles again from the central administration and make sure that fields are empty.
    • Perform incremental search crawl to drop previously indexed properties

    Removing cached user information from User information list

    Some information will be cached in the user information list: “/_catalogs/users/simple.aspx", you need to make sure that information in this list does not hold reference to the user properties that you wish to clean up. Perform the following steps...

    • Run the following scriptto update the cached user profiles

    $url = "http://SharePointSite/"
    $site  = Get-SPSite $url
    $list = $site.OpenWeb().SIteUserInfoList
    Write-Host "Total Items:" +  $list.items.count
    foreach( $item in $list.items)
    {
         if( $item["Job Title"] )

         {
                write-host $item["Job Title"];
                $item["Job Title"] = "";
                write-host $item["Job Title"]; 
                $item.Update()
         }

    }
    $list.Update()

  • PST Capture Tool Error 401 with Office 365

    This blog post will focus only on specific problem when using Microsoft Exchange PST Capture Tool with Office 365.

    So if you need more information about PST Capture Tool, check the following URLs:

     

    As a quick review on how to configure PST Capture Tool with Office 365, you will need first to configure:

    1. PST Search: and select the computers where you will search for PSTs: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh781034
    2. Create Import List: contains the list of PSTs to be imported to the cloud.
    3. Then configure the tool settings for Office 365 as the following snapshot:

     

    pst00

     

    As the above snapshot, you will need to enter:

    1. User Name: this account should be Global Administrator on your tenant. (In this article the tenant will be domain.onmicrosoft.com).

    2. Select: Grant delegate access to this mailbox.

    3. Enter the server name: you can get the server name for your account from OWA:

              a. Click options, then see all options

              b. Under “My Accounts” click on “Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access...

    4. Select: The above is an Office 365 Server.

     

    Then click check to check password and connectivity. And you will receive the following error:

    Cannot connect to user pst@domain.onmicrosoft.com inbox on server servername. Error is request failed. The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.

     

    The following snapshot shows the error:

    clip_image002

     

    Very clear!! Smile, this error will happen if you didn’t logon with this account on Outlook before. So the simple solution will be:

    1. As the tool prerequisites, you should have Outlook installed on the same server.
    2. Configure Outlook profile for the user you are using in the tool (pst@domain.onmicrosoft.com).
    3. Open Outlook and logon to the account.

     

    Go back to the PST Capture Tools, click Check and voila:

    clip_image003

     

    As you can see in the above snapshot you are successfully connected to Exchange Online. Now you can continue the steps to upload the PST to the cloud.

  • Download Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter

    Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC):

    • Takes you beyond virtualization
    • Delivers the power of many servers with the simplicity of one
    • Opens the door to every app on any cloud
    • Enables the modern work style

     

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx?ocid&wt.mc_id=TEC_108_1_33